Private Luc Deveraux and his sadistic sergeant, Andrew Scott, got killed in Vietnam. The army uses their bodies for a secret project - reanimating dead soldiers as deadly obedient cyborgs. However, their memories come back too.
A woman hires a drifter as her guide through New Orleans in search of her father, who has gone missing. They discover a deadly game of cat and mouse behind his disappearance in the process.
Director:
John Woo
Stars:
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Lance Henriksen,
Yancy Butler
Max Walker, an officer for a security agency that regulates time travel, must fend for his life against a shady politician who's intent on changing the past to control the future.
Director:
Peter Hyams
Stars:
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Mia Sara,
Ron Silver
Follows Frank Dux, an American martial artist serving in the military, who decides to leave the army to compete in a martial arts tournament in Hong Kong where fights to the death can occur.
Director:
Newt Arnold
Stars:
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Donald Gibb,
Leah Ayres
Terrorists kidnap the Russian Prime Minister's 2 kids, take Chernobyl nuclear power plant and threaten to blow up a reactor. 4 Universal Soldiers go in but are no match to a Next Gen. UniSol. Luc/JCVD goes in but faces 2 NGUs.
Director:
John Hyams
Stars:
Dolph Lundgren,
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Andrei Arlovski
In a violent and corrupt prison, decorated cop Louis Burke must infiltrate the jail to find answers to a number of inside murders. What he finds is a struggle of life and death tied in to his own past.
Director:
Deran Sarafian
Stars:
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Robert Guillaume,
Cynthia Gibb
A group of gentlemen of fortune visits a legendary "Lost City", located in Tibet. They plan to steal a priceless statue "Golden Dragon" during the martial arts tournament.
Director:
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Stars:
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Roger Moore,
James Remar
An elite team of soldiers has been used against terrorists where they use astounding physical capabilities to overcome them. Victoria, a reporter, follows them and discovers a part of their secret. When one of the team kills her cameraman she tries to escape. Luc, one of the soldiers begins to have flashbacks and turns sides and helps her as the remainder of the team follows to protect their secrets.Written by
John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Upon its release, many audiences and critics, found the film's plot to be undeniably similar to that of 'RoboCop' (1987). See more »
Goofs
The Police prefer the element of surprise instead of moving in and Arresting Luc and Veronica, which gives them both a chance to have escaped had they boarded the bus. See more »
Quotes
Scott:
[after he shot the prison bus driver that was driving Luc and Veronica]
Excuse me! You should check out your driver! He don't look so hot! Hahaha!
See more »
Alternate Versions
The Australian theatrical release of the film was heavily cut to receive an M rating. Gone were the head-shots to Vietnamese villagers, Scott getting the knife in the gut by Luc, the diner fight was heavily trimmed, a scientist getting impaled on a needle, the supermarket shootout and Dolph's demise on the farm machinery. All of these cuts were restored for an R rated VHS release and later, an MA15+ rated DVD/Bluray release. See more »
Body Count's In The House
Written by Ice-T and Ernie-c
Performed by Body Count
Courtesy of Sire Records
by Arrangement with Warner Special Products See more »
Muscles from Brussels and the Swedish man-of-war Dolph Lundgren team up as superhuman soldiers brought back to life from Vietnam in this movie. I'm not sure what it is exactly that they do I wasn't paying attention. But I'm pretty sure it's something about struggling with obeying the orders from their commanders and having flashbacks from their past lives. What I know is that they do fight a lot. They also fight civilians. They even fight each other, and that's when things start to get very entertaining.
It is only fair to watch this movie at least once since it has brought us not one, not two, but THREE sequels. What's even more awesome about these sequels is that they are all rated under 3.5 but not by enough votes to get them on the bottom 100 list on IMDb. If you fail in getting on a list like that, you even fail at failing and that is admirable. Universal Soldier is much more well-liked and higher-rated and rightly so.
I do not recall who, but another film critic put it best when he pointed to how different Universal Soldiers was from your average science-fiction movie. To summarize this, where most sci-fi movies get to the part where all the complex science needs to be explained by some brilliant professor, Universal Soldiers simply offers the explanation "we hypercharged their bodies to turn dead flesh into living tissue." And that's how dead soldiers were reanimated into superhuman killing machines. Brilliant. There's no pretension just take it or leave it.
I can't find it in my heart to give this movie anything less than a 7 based on what it set out to do. Even though the acting is atrocious, the script is a joke and the dialogue is stupid, it's still a classic in my opinion. It had some intentionally funny moments like when Van Damme was in the diner and ate like ten meals of "today's special" and everyone was staring at him. If you don't find stuff like that funny, you have to watch it strictly tongue-in-cheek and just go for the brainless early-90s style action and cut-rate explosions. 7/10
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Muscles from Brussels and the Swedish man-of-war Dolph Lundgren team up as superhuman soldiers brought back to life from Vietnam in this movie. I'm not sure what it is exactly that they do I wasn't paying attention. But I'm pretty sure it's something about struggling with obeying the orders from their commanders and having flashbacks from their past lives. What I know is that they do fight a lot. They also fight civilians. They even fight each other, and that's when things start to get very entertaining.
It is only fair to watch this movie at least once since it has brought us not one, not two, but THREE sequels. What's even more awesome about these sequels is that they are all rated under 3.5 but not by enough votes to get them on the bottom 100 list on IMDb. If you fail in getting on a list like that, you even fail at failing and that is admirable. Universal Soldier is much more well-liked and higher-rated and rightly so.
I do not recall who, but another film critic put it best when he pointed to how different Universal Soldiers was from your average science-fiction movie. To summarize this, where most sci-fi movies get to the part where all the complex science needs to be explained by some brilliant professor, Universal Soldiers simply offers the explanation "we hypercharged their bodies to turn dead flesh into living tissue." And that's how dead soldiers were reanimated into superhuman killing machines. Brilliant. There's no pretension just take it or leave it.
I can't find it in my heart to give this movie anything less than a 7 based on what it set out to do. Even though the acting is atrocious, the script is a joke and the dialogue is stupid, it's still a classic in my opinion. It had some intentionally funny moments like when Van Damme was in the diner and ate like ten meals of "today's special" and everyone was staring at him. If you don't find stuff like that funny, you have to watch it strictly tongue-in-cheek and just go for the brainless early-90s style action and cut-rate explosions. 7/10